


Rose Hill Roses

by lavender_tea_writes



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Awkward Peter Parker, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Miscommunication, Parkner Secret Santa 2019, Rose Hill - Freeform, Tree Houses, almost?, sleepy stupid harley keener
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21959758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavender_tea_writes/pseuds/lavender_tea_writes
Summary: Peter exited his classroom and skipped over to where Harley stood. That was the last thing of the day that made any sense.Peter grabbed Harley’s hand. “Hey, babe!” Peter exclaimed. Before Harley could express his confusion, Peter pulled him down to kiss his cheek. He whispered into the taller boy’s ear, “Just go with it. Please.”
Relationships: Harley Keener/Peter Parker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 441





	Rose Hill Roses

**Author's Note:**

> a very merry christmas to @peter-x-harley-cat on tumblr! i wrote this as their gift as a part of the parkner secret santa. 
> 
> hope you enjoy! happy holidays!

Harley was awoken by a shrill ringing from all around him. Shit. 

He lifted his head from his arms and rolled his stiff neck as he blinked awake. The students around him shoved books and laptops into their bags and slunk out the door. MJ poked his arm. 

“You should probably start sleeping during the night like everyone else. Mr. Shin is getting pissed about you sleeping through every class.” She said, standing up to go to her next class. Harley mumbled something in response and went to pack his books back up. Instead of seeing the textbook, laptop, and notebook that usually were on his desk during class, Harley found that his stuff was already tucked neatly into his backpack. He looked back up to take MJ, but she was already gone. 

Harley shuffled out the door and leaned against the lockers where he usually waited for Peter. He was in Photography just down the hall from where Harley had Chemistry, so they walked together to English. After a moment, Peter exited his classroom and skipped over to where Harley stood. That was the last thing of the day that made any sense. 

Peter grabbed Harley’s hand. “Hey, babe!” Peter exclaimed. Before Harley could express his confusion, Peter pulled him down to kiss his cheek. He whispered into the taller boy’s ear, “Just go with it. Please.”

Harley responded with a small nod and a smile, too tired to inquire farther. The boys intertwined their fingers and started down the hallway to their English class. Harley hadn’t even gotten a word in.

***

Harley managed to stay awake through English, but he couldn’t pay any attention to the class. They were supposed to be discussing  _ Frankenstein _ , but he was finding it a bit hard to focus with Peter chewing on his pencil next to him. He was so close, and Harley couldn’t stop thinking of Peter’s lips on his cheek and their fingers laced together all the way down the hall. 

It had come out of complete nowhere. They weren’t particularly affectionate friends, though a highly secured file Tony kept filled with pictures of them sleeping on each other might disagree, and Harley could find no reasonable cause for Peter’s sudden need to be physical. 

Despite his confusion, Harley was  _ definitely _ not going to ask Peter what was going on. He wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth and make the situation all weird. Well, weirder than it already was. 

The issue didn’t come up again until they were settling down to watch tv after far too many hours in the lab. Harley plopped himself into his corner of the couch and grabbed the remote to navigate to the next episode of  _ The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel _ . Peter grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and curled up next to Harley, with his head resting in the other boy’s lap. Harley pressed play, set the remote on the coffee table, and lowered his hand to Peter’s head to play with his curls. Peter sighed in response. 

The plan for the day was to ask Peter to come to Rose Hill with him over the weekend. The trip was intended for Harley to visit his sister and mama, and to pick up some things he had left behind when he intended on only staying in New York with Tony for the summer. Now that he was staying for the school year and going to Midtown with Peter, he found that there were a few things from his mama’s house that he wanted to bring to his current residence. But Harley had an ulterior motive: to introduce Abby to Peter. 

He just had to convince Peter to come with him. 

It shouldn’t be as hard as it was. It’s not like it was a big deal if he got rejected or anything, he could always take him down later, or ask Tony to have Abby flown up. Peter had no real reason to say no either. Harley knew he wasn’t busy. But after what had happened earlier in the hallway, Peter seemed like an enigma. 

But as Harley’s mama always said, fuck it. There’s no time like the present. 

“Hey Pete,” Harley said, “D’you think you’d be willin’ to come down to Rose Hill with me this weekend?”

Peter didn’t even move before replying, “Sure, why not.”

That was easier than anticipated. 

***

The ride to Nashville International Airport has not been smooth. Peter got off the plane with a sick stomach and a bad headache. He had slept on Harley most of the drive from the airport to the Keener residence and didn’t feel much better when Harley woke him up and they entered the town limits of Rose Hill. 

“Can you get up, Peter? I’ll get you some water and some Advil once we get inside.”

“Advil won’t help,” Peter mumbled as he slid out of the hired car. Right. The stupid spider metabolism. 

Harley helped Peter inside and set him at the kitchen table before grabbing him a glass of water. Peter’s head popped up and he opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted.

A screaming 13-year old came careening down the stairs wielding a baseball bat. Abby only stopped when the saw Harley. 

“Oh. It’s just you.” She said, dropping the bat to the ground.

“Well there’s no need to sound excited after not seeing me for four months. Really, I would expect you to be disappointed.”

“Well, you’re early! I was expecting to beat up an intruder, so really, just seeing you here is a disappointment.” Harley snorted. 

“Funny, Abs.” Harley hugged his little sister, burying his face in her nest of strawberry-blonde curls.

“You really are too early, though,” Abby said, pulling away, “Now I have to cancel my plans with Darla. We were going to go look at homecoming dresses at Lucy’s.”

“No, don’t cancel! Peter and I can stay here until you get back. I assume Mama’s still at work? Maybe we’ll pop down to the diner and say hello. Don’t cancel because of us.”

Abby gave her brother an inquisitive look, “Peter? Did you adopt a dog in New York? Mama told Tony  _ specifically  _ not to let you do that because you can’t bring him back here.”

Harley laughed, “Pretty much,” He motioned to Peter laying on the table, “This is my best friend Peter, he is basically a golden retriever. Not now, though, he’s feeling sick from the plane.” Peter waved a lazy hand at the pair. “He’s usually a lot more talkative.”

A car beeped outside. “Shit, that’s gotta by Darla. You sure you’re ok with me leavin’?”

“ _ Yes _ , Abs, go.”

Abby gave him a lopsided grin, “Thanks, Harley. I’ll see you in a few hours.” She grabbed her shoes from the rack near the door and left. Harley turned to the boy with his head in his arms at the kitchen table.

“You feeling any better, Parker?”

“Yeah. The water helped a lot, thanks.” Peter stood up and wandered over to the counter. 

“Do you need anything else?”

“No, I’m fine,” Peter said, leaning over the kitchen sink to peer out the window, “What’s that?” Harley got up and followed Peter’s gaze. 

“It’s the treehouse I built for Abby when I was 12. We used to have tea parties in it when she was younger,” Harley glanced down, “She thinks she’s too old for them now.”

Harley could practically see the lightbulb go off in Peter’s head. He strode across the room to the stove and turned on the burner that held the kettle before turning to the nearest cabinet and rustling through it. 

“Where do you keep the tea?” Harley blinked at him in confusion, “And a pitcher, too. And teacups, or mugs if you don’t have them.”

“What?”

“We’re going to have a tea party, Keener, catch up.”

Ten minutes later the boys found themselves standing at the base of the treehouse, trying to figure out how to get the piping hot kettle of tea to the ladder without spilling the whole thing. 

“I could web up,” Peter suggested, “Or climb up and then web onto the pitcher and pull it up from you.”

“But I don’t want to worry about getting your webs in my tea.”

“Hey, they’re non-toxic! And bubblegum flavored! I wouldn’t put some toxic, yucky bunch of chemicals near criminal’s mouths when I web them up, I wouldn’t want to poison them.”

“I  _ know _ they’re bubblegum flavored. That’s why I don’t want them.”

Peter gasped and put his hand to his chest in an exaggerated mock offense, “How could you? Bubblegum flavor is superior!”

“No, Pete, it tastes like sugary ass.”

“But delicious sugary ass!”

Harley let out a small laugh and sighed, “Get back if topic Parker, how are we going to get back up?”

“Well, how did you get up when you and Abby did it?” Harley paused.

“I don’t know, she always had it up in the treehouse before she asked me to come up. I have no idea how she did it.”

Peter’s face contorted as he considered their dilemma, “I’ll try to just carry it up. Maybe my spidey-sense will warn me if I’m about to spill it?”

“You mean your Peter-tingle?” Harley teased.

“Stop calling it that!” Peter stepped towards the ladder and started to climb it, “God, I wish May had never started calling it that. You know Mr. Stark has caught on? I think he heard it form Happy.” 

Peter made it up the ladder, set the tea pitcher down, and went to grab the mugs from Harley, only to find that the other boy had just followed him up the ladder, two mugs in hand. Peter picked the NASA one out of Harley’s hand for himself, leaving the one that said “World’s Best Mom.” He filled his cup, passed the pitcher to Harley, and settled down on the weathered treehouse floor. The treehouse was a little small, so Peter was crouched over, and Harley even more so. There was barely enough room for them to shift around without bumping into each other every few seconds. Harley poured his tea and raised it to Peter, pinky out. The other boy touched their mugs together with a clink, and Harley settled onto the floor, his leg flush against Peter’s. The boys peered out the treehouse window for a few moments before Harley spoke up and broke the silence.

“You see that patch of red up there?” He pointed out the window, to the hill in front of them, “It’s the original Rose Hill. The whole town was based around the floral plantation and grew from the people who worked there. It’s still open, but it’s shrunk a bit. Ain’t nothing more than a family business now, instead of a source of income for a whole town of people.”

Peter rested his head on Harley’s shoulder and clutched his mug to his chest before speaking, “Tell me a story about it.”

Harley sighed, “Well there’s this tradition for kids in Rose Hill. Usually middle schoolers, because high schoolers tend to think it’s kinda dumb. Young couples will go there on a date, look out over the fields and fields of flowers, and when the sun sets, they’d have their first kiss. Before I knew I was gay I brought Jeanie Baker there in 7th grade n’ kissed her on the cheek. She wouldn’t talk to me for a week after that, cause she was expecting me to kiss her on the lips.”

“So your southern chivalry doesn’t always work out for you? I’m shocked.”

“Haha, so funny.” Harley deadpanned, And I’m not the only one who unexpectedly kisses people on the cheek round here, you know.”

Peter’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, “What’re you talking about?”

Harkey took a shaky breath and explained, “In the hallway the other day? Before English? I was half asleep and you just walked up and planted one on me. What was that about?”

“Oh, I, uh, forgot about that. There’s this girl in my photo class that keeps hitting on me and I didn’t know how to make her stop so kinda told her I had a boyfriend a few weeks ago and I thought it would make her go away, but now she keeps asking who he is and I blurted out that it was you the other day and I knew she was watching as I left so I kissed you on the cheek to prove it and it made her go away.” Harley was silent for a moment, trying to process the whole rambled story Peter had just told him. “Why, what did you think it was?”

“Well I thought- I mean- you just kissed me and I didn’t know but I-” Harley stumbled, and resolutely shut his mouth.

“O-oh.” You thought-”

“Well I didn’t think I just wondered-”

“But that I-”

“Yeah, you-”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

A moment of charged silence passed.

And another.

Then Peter spoke. Very, very quietly.

“Did you think that because you wanted it to be true?”

Harley bit his lip, “I don’t know. Maybe? I’m not really sure.”

Peter removed his head from where it laid between the other boy’s shoulder and chest. His eyes locked with Harley’s. When Harley’s head bent down to break the contact, Peter’s hand shot to his cheek, the same one Peter had kissed just days ago. With a soft “Hey,” Peter guided Harley so that he was looking back at Peter, backlit by the golden rays of the setting sun.

“Yes or no, Harley?”

Harley’s words shook as he replied with a quiet “Yes.”

And in the tiny treehouse, looking out at the fields of flowers under a vibrant sunset, the boys kissed. 

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thank you for reading :)


End file.
